Warm
by jemsimmons
Summary: Two years in the future, when Skye is already a SHIELD agent, she and Ward are on a mission that involves retrieving something from an abandoned house. The house blows up. Skye is waiting outside. Ward isn't that lucky.


**So this story is set about two years in the future and it's just a one-shot. Hope you like it!**

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Skye was hit by the heat of the explosion and the wind threw her to the ground. For a split second, there was an extremely loud sound; then everything she heard was a ringing noise and the pain in her ears was overwhelming. She tried to protect her head with her hands as debris flew by her, but not before a piece of glass stroked her cheek, leaving a bloody cut.

The windows were shattered, the structure was giving in, and everything was on fire. Skye got up in a jump, pressing her hands to her ears and starting to hyperventilate. Her chest hurt like hell.

"What just happened?" Skye heard Simmons's concerned question in her earpiece.

"The house, it—" She gasped. "I think there was a bomb, and— _everything_ blew up, Jemma!"

Skye touched the cut in her face and there was more blood in her fingers than she'd expected, but that didn't hurt nearly as much as the fact she couldn't help but acknowledge.

Ward was inside.

She walked numbly toward the destroyed front porch of the house and her shaky fingertips touched her earpiece. "Ward?"

Fitzsimmons joined Skye by calling Ward continuously, while she glanced away, her voice getting lower and lower as the breath was being knocked out of her lungs. At some point, the two agents back at the Bus simply muted, and Skye heard a deep exhale from one of them. The denial almost pushed her to the ground as she hoarsely started yelling Ward's name, walking around the house, putting as much effort as she could into her frantic shouting. Whenever she heard the sound of debris breaking or falling down inside the house she lost her balance, to the point where she gave up walking because it felt like something was pressing her chest and her back at the same time, making it painful to breath.

As tears welled in, she couldn't help but think about their relationship since the first day they'd met, two years ago.

Being captured and interrogated as to her involvement with the Rising Tide hadn't felt like such a promising start for a friendship back then, when they both despised each other's presence, but he becoming her supervising officer had been crucial for the transition. For long months, it had been only that: S.O. and agent in training. It had taken them a great deal of time to reach a minimum level of friendship—the level in which he'd stopped with the cold glares at her whenever she'd made a joke out of a bad situation in order to lighten up the mood. That—and his rare, slight demonstrations of not completely hating her—had given Skye the freedom to start calling him _Warm_, much to his irritation. Every single time, he would correct her like she had some sort of mental illness and didn't actually know his name. Their friendship had grown slowly, and she'd always feel afraid of eventually screwing things up again, like she'd done once with the Miles incident. In his last birthday, he'd made his unwillingness to celebrate it in any way fairly clear, so Skye had pretended not to even know about it, like the rest of the team did; when he'd returned to his bunk at night, though, he'd been surprised by a blue velvet cupcake (which may sound weird but it'd been delicious), accompanied by a handwritten note that read only "_happy birthday. –Skye_".

About six months ago, she'd become an official SHIELD agent, which had been a giant step from her, even though she was still very far from Ward (six clearance levels away, to be exact). He was still her S.O., but it wasn't the same thing anymore—he wouldn't train _her_, he'd train _with_ her. Skye considered them "partners", something that had never been officially established, but she might as well have assumed it since they'd be paired up whenever sent on missions. She had worked hard to regain his trust and had earned it. In the field, they'd always have each other's backs, and even though he'd never underestimate her potential, she learned to cope with his constant necessity to protect her. He carried the responsibility of assuring that everyone around him was safe—not because he was obligated to, but because it was just who he was.

Earlier that day, he'd made fun of Skye for wearing her combat suit to a mission that wouldn't even require combat. At the lab, where Fitzsimmons had set up their comms, she'd instinctively called him _Warm_, and when he'd corrected her—as usual— Jemma had commented that he'd never get her to stop doing that. She'd begged him to tell her more about the mission, since she had been kicked out in the middle of the briefing due to her low clearance level; he had, of course, denied her request. Nevertheless, she'd been excited of being sent in along with him, even though the mission was apparently no sweat for Ward. They were only supposed to retrieve a package of some sort of serum, hidden inside that house—or, at least, that was all she was told. If there had been more to the story unbeknownst to her, that would explain why he'd taken her with him.

During the entire time their team had existed, he'd been in dangerous operations and had experienced various near-death situations. He couldn't simply die in an unexpected explosion during such a ridiculous mission. He was too good of a person to just die like that—to die _at all_. Skye couldn't bear that thought.

She heard the distant voice of Fitz telling her to get away from the house because something else might blow up, but she was unable to move. The cut in her cheek was stinging and started to cough because of the smoke. Skye wasn't sure whether she wanted to smash her head against a wall several times or fall to the ground and cry. Hyperventilating harder than ever, she covered her own mouth with both hands and closed her eyes firmly, until something caught her attention.

There had been stuff falling and creaking already, but _that_ was different—a louder noise coming from the left side of the house. The possibility of it meaning that the house was starting to fall down almost crushed her, but she ran there anyway, just in time to see what looked like a nightstand falling out of a broken window.

No, not _falling_—it had landed a bit too far from the wall to have fallen, which means it had been thrown. As soon as she felt a little glitch of hope light up inside her, it was transformed into happiness bubbling at her core. Grant Ward jumped out of the window, bruised and coughing desperately, but alive. Even more unbelievable: he dropped on the ground a blue coolbox.

Skye didn't really think before she rushed toward him and jumped into his arms, which would've been dramatically beautiful if he hadn't almost fallen down with her. Still, she hugged him so firmly it was hard for him to breathe. Probably even harder when she suddenly kissed him—not slowly and passionately like she'd imagined their first kiss would be, but, due to the circumstances, a fierce, thirsty kiss that tasted of the desperation she felt.

For a second, resting her forehead against his, she didn't move, didn't breathe, kept her hands wrapped around his neck. The humiliation didn't take long to kick in after that. He gently put her back to her feet and she immediately stared at the ground, feeling her cheeks flush.

"I'm, uh… I'm sorry," she stuttered.

She was about to add anything to change the subject quickly, but he didn't give her time to do so. "Are you sure about that?"

Raising her head to see the wry grin he had and his eyebrows wiggling, her embarrassment just vanished. "Not really," she blurted out absentmindedly.

He raised his eyebrows defiantly. "Are you trying to say—"

"I'm not trying to say _anything_," she cut him off just in time, gesturing her head toward the house. "So, how did you _not_ die in there?"

His expression made it clear for a second that he thought she was supposed to know the answer to that question, but then it changed like he'd realized something. "The package was in the bunker. The staircase was behind a bookshelf in one of the bedrooms."

"There was _a bunker_?!" She yelled at him furiously, punching his shoulder, which sort of hurt her hand more than him, but she didn't care so she did it once again. "Why didn't you tell me? If you say it was classified I swear to god I'm going to beat the shit out of your sorry ass—"

"It was classified, I'm sorry," he answered, trying to contain a smirk because Skye threatening to physically hurt him was just hilarious, even though he knew she could. It was only then that he noticed the cut on her cheek, cupping her face in his hands and tenderly running his fingertips on the skin covered by drying blood next to the cut. "Are you okay?"

"Well, I wasn't sitting in a goddamn bunker while my partner thought I had _burned up_." She hissed, slapping his hands out of her face. "So, yeah, I'm fine, you moron."

He looked her in the eyes. "Were you _crying_?"

"No, _Warm_, my eyes are watery because of the smoke. Don't flatter yourself thinking I was laying on the ground sobbing over your death," she spat, clenching her hands in fists as she walked away from him. "I hate you," she added lowly.

When she heard Fitzsimmons laughing, she froze. They'd heard the entire thing through the earpieces. _Goddamn_.

"Yeah, you made that pretty clear by kissing him," Simmons mocked happily.

"Great move, Skye," Fitz added.

Telling them to shut up would be useless so she just sighed out loud and marched her way to their S.U.V. parked across the street, trying to conciliate the anger over the fact that he didn't tell her about the bunker and the relief of knowing he was alive. Eventually, her lips curved into a satisfied grin when the second feeling took over the first one.

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**It took me ages to write this because I got stuck but thanks to my good friend Be ( lovegkp on Twitter—I swear one day I'll make her join this website) I manage to finish it. Thank you for reading! Reviews are very much appreciated if you liked it. :)**


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